Whoís that schlemiel thatís always getting lost in the woods? Itís todayís bonus preview, Fool. Thereís a lot to unpack here, so letís start at the bottom.

Lost in the Woods is a new kind of card-shaped thing, a State! You can think of it like a status effect. While itís in front of you, at the start of each of your turns, you may discard a card to receive a Boon. Usually thatís a pretty good deal. But thereís only one copy of Lost in the Woods, so you might have to take it from somebody else.

Thatís where Fool comes in. If you already have Lost in the Woods, Fool does nothing. Heís lost in the woods, donít you know! Maybe you can at least discard him for a Boon. Anyway. If you donít have Lost in the Woods, then Fool goes on a little adventure. He bumbles around, getting three random Boons that you can receive in any order. For instance, if you drew the Boons that Donald X. previewed today (The Seaís Gift, The Sunís Gift, and The Swampís Gift), you might choose to first gain a Will-oí-Wisp, then look at the top 4 cards of your deck and discard/reorder them, then draw whichever one you put back on top! Not bad for a $3 card. Then you take Lost in the Woods, and your Fools are useless until somebody else plays one. At least you get that bonus every turn.

Finally, in games that use Fool, everybody starts with a Lucky Coin. Itís like a Copper that gains Silvers! It can really speed up your deck early on. And later if you decide you have enough Silver, maybe you can remodel Lucky Coin into a Gold or something. Or trash it. Or just stop playing it. The possibilities are (not actually) endless.

I posted a card called "Fool" in the fan cards forum more than 5 years ago (before Dark Ages came out); it had one copy and went between players. I never thought I'd actually see a hot potato card in an official set.

Wow, the product info blurb didn't even say anything about States! I wonder how many there are? Looks like there might not be room for a traveller, though, especially since Fool isn't one. These cards are cool enough.

Glad to see only one person can have a state at a time. I wasn't ready to kill Edicts, too ^^Although, how interesting are they now that states exist?

I can really say that Heirlooms are my favourite mechanic from Nocturne so far. I usually hate to parrot when people praise something, because I'm a grumpy hermit and stuff, but the mechanic is very cleverly, cleanly implemented. The Heirlooms themselves haven't been a dissapointment either.

Also, if HiG was still the German publisher, man would they be happy over this card. They could easily translate it as their company name and nobody would even know it was Fool in English.

I'm getting the impression that much like Dark Ages' actual theme was combos and Guilds' actual theme was bald people, this set's actual theme is making good players win less with stuff like Fool and Imp and Boons in general.

I'm getting the impression that much like Dark Ages' actual theme was combos and Guilds' actual theme was bald people, this set's actual theme is making good players win less with stuff like Fool and Imp and Boons in general.

You mean because they are luck driven? I actually perceive that to be the case for Boons, and I guess Fool is weirdly political in a way, but I don't see Imp being bad-player-friendly at all.

I'm getting the impression that much like Dark Ages' actual theme was combos and Guilds' actual theme was bald people, this set's actual theme is making good players win less with stuff like Fool and Imp and Boons in general.

You mean because they are luck driven? I actually perceive that to be the case for Boons, and I guess Fool is weirdly political in a way, but I don't see Imp being bad-player-friendly at all.

The difference between drawing Imp at the top of your shuffle vs at the bottom is much greater than with other Lab effects, even Hunting Party.

Iím going to go out on a limb and say this expansion may not be the best to introduce Dominion to a newbie. Weíve come a long way since 2008.

Yeah, at first with the night cards it looked pretty simple. A new game phase, that's easy to explain. Then there were heirlooms, which might be a bit complicated, but mostly for the person doing setup. But Boons and States, yeah that'll even make experienced players' heads hurt.

Hey, Lucky Coin provides fuel for Looks Pooka and stuff (dangit auto-correct, Pooka is a word apparently). It's not too shabby, and it doesn't make me feel awful spending it in the opening like Cursed Gold.

How likely is it to get a $5 on the second shuffle with Silver/Silver/Silver with Lucky Coin?

It's neat that getting the three Boons off Fool isn't conditional on stealing Lost in the Woods from another player. You can get the effect from getting Lost in the Woods by taking it from limbo as well. This is as opposed to Lurker, where playing the first one sets up gains for your opponent's Lurker.

Wow. There is so much going on with this game already. Like there is sooooooo much going on. And we still have 2 new concepts to go over this week. Is it possible that there's "too" much going on with Nocturne? It seems like this easily could have been two entire expansions instead of one. I'm not complaining and it's gonna be crazy figuring out how to properly conquer these new concepts, but the amount of brand new complex mechanics is huge. Considering it's the 11th expansion and most of us have the whole dominion thing down by now, I greatly accept this new challenges. But yeah a new player probably won't be messing around with nocturne for a long time.

Heirlooms are awesome. Probably the thing I'm most excited for and game warping in the best way possible.

Wow. There is so much going on with this game already. Like there is sooooooo much going on. And we still have 2 new concepts to go over this week. Is it possible that there's "too" much going on with Nocturne? It seems like this easily could have been two entire expansions instead of one. I'm not complaining and it's gonna be crazy figuring out how to properly conquer these new concepts, but the amount of brand new complex mechanics is huge. Considering it's the 11th expansion and most of us have the whole dominion thing down by now, I greatly accept this new challenges. But yeah a new player probably won't be messing around with nocturne for a long time.

Really there's only one "new concept" left, since the fifth mechanic in the blurb is "cards that you can only get from other cards", which not only isn't new to Nocturne, but you've already seen a bunch of them this week (Imp, Ghost, Will-o'-Wisp).

I think the Nocturne mechanics are pretty easy for new players. And they can certainly make for some terse cards. You may have noticed that out of all the new stuff shown so far, only Idol needs to use the smaller font.